Only Human
by A Pox Be Upon You
Summary: AU: Edward Masen survives the influenza without vampiric assistance after telling the strange man who comes to him in the night to save his mother, not him. He's left with survivor's guilt and gnawing self-doubt. Also, he really wants to find that doctor.
1. The Fever Breaks

Only Human

He dreams.

It is no relief. Of course not. There is no relief anywhere, there is never any relief, only blood filling up his lungs. _'Fluenza. _The healthy children are singing skipping rhymes about his murderer. So much pain, and an invisible, horrid, unbearable load, crushing him in a sticky mess between limp limbs and too much phlegm and crimson splashes from where he coughs at every passing moment into his pillow; these are the things that define him, now, alone between grimy sheets. One of millions. Dying.

He dreams anyway. Sometimes, in the dreams, there are cool hands pressed to his forehead, even kisses like butterflies against his cheek.

In one of his dreams, a recurring one that slips over his face like a damp cloak every other night, one of the night shift doctors pauses in his rounds and leans over him. The dream-doctor is pale and beautiful in the moonlight, though half his face is always delineated in shadow. Like marble, cold and fair: high proud cheekbones, a long, straight, classical nose, the sharp line of his jaw cruel in its perfection. Hair that might otherwise have been blond is leached of color by the late hour shadows, instead falls white and shining over the man's smooth brow. Almost a ghost, but too well shaped, too real, more real than the shadowy room, though not, alas, more real than the disease that courses through Edward's thin frame.

Every other night. Then every night.

Then:

"I could save you," his visitor says throughout the images that swim before his sleeping eyes.

Edward – awakens. But the man is still there.

"I could save you," he says again, turning so that no part of him lies in darkness. "Here. Now."

"Do I need saving?" Edward rasps. He manages to force his lips upwards into a crooked curve, a bitter suggestion of a smile; a triumph. It doesn't matter. Battles never matter when the war was won, it seems, weeks ago, early in its onset, when he was still bent over the keys, gasping for breath.

"Your mother thinks so."

"Alive?" So much hangs on a word.

"Not for long, boy. Your father…" The beautiful face softens, edges curving, blurring. Some compassion in his expression.

Edward turns his face to the wall. "But you can save me."

"Yes."

"Then save her!" He tries to shout it, tries to bring down the walls and remake the spaces with his sickening voice. It comes out a whimper. "Save her. Save her." There are no echoes. The earth does not split for the sound of it. He wishes he could murder silence, finds all he can do is add to it with a layering of whispers.

The doctor's gaze is black iron. "If-" he begins. Then something changes, ripples through him. A sudden thought or realization, it seems.

The cool hand he's dreamed of brushes across his face.

"Your fever," the man whispers, reverent or perhaps repelled; "it's breaking."

Edward does not understand. "Save her," he insists.

The hollow hush, beaten back for a moment, returns. The doctor, the savior saved from saving, looks at him.

Then:

"I will."

-x-x-x-

When he is released a month later, bloodless and hobbling, Edward Anthony Masen discovers that Elizabeth Masen is gone. Her very name has been wiped from the hospital's records. Elizabeth Masen never was, according to neatly printed handwriting in dark green ink on white cards.

He screams. He can scream now. The people cringe away from him, visible proof of his power over the quiet.

"Sir?" says the sallow caterpillar of a woman, who hides any vestiges of loveliness remaining to her behind wire-rimmed spectacles and sober clothing. "What's wrong? If you'd just step this way –"

"No," Edward says. "I'm sorry. No. Just. My mother…"

"Oh," she says, false comprehension dawning on her ugly grey face. "My condolences. If I may, Mr. Masen, fresh air will do you good."

"You're right," he manages. "You're right." She's utterly, utterly wrong.

He limps out anyway. Weak sunshine filters through a thin layer of grey smog. He breathes in icy air, breathes out crystalline vapor. Chicago is under his feet and above his head and around him, solid and mortal and familiar. A kind of home, even. The doors to the nightmare world, the hospital, have closed.

His father is dead. His mother is gone, perhaps because of him.

For all sorts of reasons, he starts to laugh, merry and ringing. Why not? Why not, why not, why not?

He's alive.

A/N: Not sure whether I should continue this or not. Depends on the kind of feedback I get. Is anyone _interested _in reading about an imperfect, scarred, human Edward who survived, or is that just me?


	2. Loving Libby

Six months and two jobs later finds Edward Masen in a smoky jazz club, swearing at the piano. Libby Swann, the barmaid, keeps a cautious eye on him, because while he's a bloody decent player he's less than stable, like most good musicians. It isn't all that common to see a really excellent white jazz player, but he's certainly one. Starving artists, she says to herself, they're all the same. So she keeps an eye on him.

It doesn't have _that _much to do with the fact that he's handsome as all hell.

"Fucking fucking fucking fuck," Edward tells the keyboard which his fingers are slumped against.

"Got a problem, Eddie?" she says lightly, wiping off the glass for the second time, on automatic as she is.

"Edward, please," he replies, and then, sighing: "Yes."

"Well?"

"Dizziness, is all."

He had the 'fluenza, she knows. He survived mostly unscathed - he's far better off than some, to be sure - but he does have fits, on occasion; headaches and shaking, sudden weakness. Generally he makes it through his nightly performances without breaking down, but during the day, when he practices and plays fragments of older, slower melodies, his fingers occasionally stop, as if someone up there just cut the strings, and slip limply to his sides. It makes her faintly uneasy, the first time she sees it; it feels like something that wasn't supposed to happen, that wouldn't have happened in a better world. She doesn't know why; suppresses the feeling, most of the time. Libby is a practical girl, and while she's not devout in any reasonable sense of the word, she believes quite stoutly in God's creation: the idea that there are other sorts of world sits ill with her.

"Need a drink?" she asks now, setting the glass down on the counter.

"Yes," says Edward, leaning back on the bench and stretching, his fingers still hanging helplessly. "I don't care what. Even this place's regular old rotgut is fine."

"One rotten rotgut, coming right up," she retorts, laughing. "I'm very offended by that remark, Mr. Masen. I may never forgive you."

"I'm not blaming you, miss. I know it's not your fault that the brewers piss in it before sending."

"The very idea!" Libby kneels down next to the barrel and opens the spigot, filling up the mug with brown liquid that does, she admits, look like it could harbor all sorts of unknown substances. When it's full she marches over to where he's sitting, dozing off now, it looks like, and slams the mug onto the table at his elbow with a satisfying thud.

He startles, and glares at her. "Libby!"

"Your drink, sir." She is perfectly grave.

Edward seems about to say something else, but then he stops. Sighs; nods, picks up the mug with two hands, which have apparently recovered, and drinks half the cup in one go.

"That's not healthy, you know."

"I know," he says. He probably does; Libby has seen him at the bar as often as the piano, blank-eyed and reeking of liquor. The sight usually brings on her motherly side, but right now is different. Right now he is taking another swig and she is admiring him, not pitying him, faulty fingers forgotten briefly. Any living woman would. There is much to admire, from his pale skin to his flushed cheeks, from his full lips to those green eyes, downcast now, watching the world through bronzed lashes, watching the world under translucent eyelids, curving gently.

He lowers the mug and swallows. She watches the movement of his throat, is aware that a good Christian girl oughtn't be quite so flustered by details like that. Oughtn't notice details like that.

"Are you waiting for a tip, miss?" He raises a scraggly eyebrow.

"I'm not _waiting _for anything, Mr. Masen," she says, on impulse, and steals a kiss from the corner of his mouth. It's only a peck, her dry lips brushing his, which are wetted with beer, but it is a small half-secret, warm and pleasant.

Edward blinks at her. "Oh."

"Barmaid's fee," she says cheerfully, and sits down on the table. It's not as if there's anyone else in the clubroom; at noon, most of their eminently respectable clients wouldn't be seen within a mile of them and the rest can't be seen within a mile of them, because they'd be arrested. The space is left abandoned and smoky and dim, but Libby is aware in a vague, subconscious way that Edward is more comfortable in echoing gloom than stifling bustle, her own preferred habitat.

He looks at her for a while and then, smiling in a way that redefines his face around it, from the shape of his eyes to the shadows of his cheekbones, leans forward and kisses her back.

It is longer and deeper and sloppier and considerably less decent: she finds herself bent back, gripping the table's edges. Twenty years ago, she imagines, some righteous angel would have come in and stopped them by government edict; but they are young and wild, at the cusp of an era, and there is nothing to stop them from falling recklessly in love. Thus the kiss, which is where it begins.

He sits back, finally, and the smile's been transmuted to a full out grin, rakish and insouciant. She grins right back. It marks only the start of a fling with a temporary performer, just another in a rotating set of the pub's attractions, but it was a bloody decent kiss, she thinks, one to fit a bloody decent man. Plenty of reason to grin like there's no tomorrow.

"Pianist's fee," he says, and she laughs again, sweeter and truer than her earlier mockery.

"If I'm paying you, you should play me something. Play me something, pianist."

Edward flexes his fingers thoughtfully and nods. "Fair enough, Miss Swann." And play he does, until daylight fades and the world expands and they go back to their real lives, changed just a little - just a little! - by stolen kisses and paid for songs; something to last them until noontime tomorrow rolls around.

A/N: Libby is Bella's ancestor. Feel free to correct me if there's some reason she couldn't actually exist.

And yes, this chapter is fluff incarnate. I know. I know. More plottage next chapter, whenever that may be.


End file.
